Many products today include an Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS) tag that is situated somewhere in the product or product packaging. The same products include barcodes or embedded hidden watermarks that are integrated throughout the product packaging representing information included in a barcode. The EAS tag provides a security mechanism against consumer theft, such that when the EAS tag is not deactivated at the Point-Of-Sale (POS) terminal during checkout and the consumer passes through EAS detection scanners when exiting a store, the detection scanners trigger a loud buzzing that can be heard by staff of the store to investigate whether theft occurred or whether a false alarm was triggered by the detection scanners.
Scanners can often detect and read a barcode from the product packaging at a greater distance than EAS deactivators can reliably deactivate EAS tags situated in or on the product packaging. Also, and in many cases, the position of the barcode on the product packaging is not in proximity to the position of the EAS tag on the product packaging. In fact, the EAS tag may be situated on a side of the product packaging that lacks any barcode. EAS tags are typically not visible on the product packaging whereas the barcodes are visible and may redundantly appear in multiple locations on the product packaging of a single product.
Scanners are beginning to transition from devices that recognized barcodes, to devices that recognize the product, even if the barcode cannot be seen (object recognition). The product recognition even might occur before, during, or after the object passes through, or around the “scan zone” where barcodes can be read by the scanner. In this case, the scanner would send the barcode of the object recognized.
Consumers performing self-checkouts at Self-Service Terminals (SST) are completely unaware that a product being purchased may include an EAS tag, and clerks performing cashier-assisted checkouts are trained to quickly locate the barcode on the product packaging and pass that location in front of the scanner. Cashiers are also typically unaware when a product may include an EAS tag and when a product does not include an EAS tag. Furthermore, even when a cashier knows a product includes an EAS tag, the cashier does not typically know where the location of that EAS tag is at on the product packaging.
When an EAS tag is not deactivated (typically by altering an electrical or acoustic-magnetic circuit in the tag using an electromagnetic field), the detection scanners will produce an audible alarm when the customer exits the store. These false positives can be annoying to store staff and during heavy consumer traffic cause congestion at checkout stations. The false alarms are so common that they are typically ignored by store personnel and customers. Consequently, many stores may intentionally deactivate their detection scanners thereby acceding to greater security risks for theft even when the stores have invested in and have the additional security that EAS tags and technology provide. Additionally, EAS equipment suppliers are demanding that vendors of scanners reduce the functionality that the scanners are capable of achieving such that the scanners can only read the barcodes or watermarks when at shorter distance that the EAS tags can be deactivated.